She dragged her weary butt off the window seat and trudged over to join the daemons at the minibar.
Lyre held up a bottle of something. “Hey, Piper, want a drink? A beautiful lady can have all sorts of fun when she lets loose a little.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you think it’s a little risky to get drunk?”
“Lyre is the only one who will be getting drunk,” Seiya said smugly.
Piper glanced at her questioningly.
She gave Lyre a look that was half haughtiness, half challenging. “Draconians are immune to poisons.”
“Alcohol isn’t a poi—” He broke off, frowned at the bottle, then sighed in defeat. “Never mind.”
“What’s up, Piper?” Ash asked, recognizing that she wasn’t there to just chat.
She put her hand into her back pocket and pulled out the disc, holding it out for them to see. “I found this on the reaper I killed. When I picked it up, it was glowing and there were markings written in the light, but I couldn’t read it. Mom said it was an Underworld language.”
“I carried those things back and forth between Samael and his agents all the time,” Kiev said, appearing behind Piper to look over her shoulder. “They’re impossible to unlock unless you—”
He stopped speaking when Lyre reached out and plucked the disc from her hand. He raised it to his face, flipping it around and around as he squinted at it. His eyes slowly darkened and the air sizzled with a touch of magic. He tapped a finger in the center of the disc and red light flashed around the edges.
“How did you do that?” Kiev asked in disbelief.
“Blood magic,” Lyre said, his tone almost clinical. “The spell will only activate in the presence of a particular type of blood—reaper blood, probably, or even a specific person.”
Piper stared at him, then lowered her empty hand to her side.
“Have you seen one of these before?” Seiya asked.
Lyre gave a little shrug, turning the disc over again. “Without more blood from that reaper to trigger it, I don’t know if we’ll be able to see the message.”
Piper shook off her shock. This was the second spell Lyre had shown familiarity with that was tied to Hades.
“I’m sorry,” she told them. “I should have shown you before we left Fairglen so we could go back for his blood.”
“No,” Lyre muttered, most of his attention on the disc. “It looks too complex for that. Old blood would probably wipe the spell out. I bet it only worked because he bled on it right as he died.”
“Can you unlock it?” Ash asked calmly.
Lyre shrugged. “Maybe?”
“If we can decipher the message,” Piper said, “it might be the evidence we need to convince the Gaian commanders.”
Lyre gave the disc a dubious look. “I’ll give it a shot.”
Muttering to himself, he moved to the small table and plunked down in a chair. Piper stared at him, her mind spinning. How could he tell so much about a complex reaper spell with only a few moments of study? Why did he seem so comfortable working with an intelligence tool from Hades?
Ash nudged her. She glanced at him.
“Let him concentrate,” he murmured.
She reluctantly nodded, trying to push it out of her mind for now. She drifted away from the kitchenette, glancing idly around the room, then returned to her spot by the window.
The door opened and Mona slipped in, her arms full of extra blankets. She deposited them on the sofa, gave the daemons standing around the little table a surprised look, then started spreading the blankets out to turn the cushions into another bed. Once finished, she crossed the room to join Piper on the window seat.
“What did I miss?” she asked.
“Lyre is attempting to unlock the spell on that disc so we can decipher the message,” Piper explained.
“Oh, that would be very helpful.” Mona frowned a little. “I have some concerns about convincing the Command Staff that our suspicions require their attention. Some hard proof would go a long way.”
Together, they looked out over the cityscape. The lights of hundreds of buildings glowed, stretching as far as the eye could see.
“It’s quite different, isn’t it?” Mona commented.
Piper gave a slow nod. She had never been to Habinal City before, and she really hadn’t expected it to be so ... nice. Was this what cities had been like before the war? Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but from her perch by the window, she couldn’t see any abandoned buildings. No rusting cars. No graffiti and no garbage in the streets. Almost all the streetlights glowed happily, lighting the sidewalks, where the occasional passerby casually walked, unafraid of the dark alleys and shadowed doorways.
“Why can’t all cities be like this?” she murmured. “Why is this one special?”
“There is a lot of money here,” Mona said. “There are a lot of jobs, and there are few daemons who aren’t affiliated with one of the embassies.”
Piper lowered her voice. “Do you really think daemons are the reason the other cities are so rotted and dangerous?”
Mona’s lips twisted. “Their presence does contribute. I know you don’t want to believe that, but humans are afraid of daemons. You haven’t spent much time outside cities, so you don’t know how people in towns think. It’s like the Dark Ages. Daemons are devil spawn to them, and city residents are considered ‘tainted’ by their exposure to them. They don’t realize how few daemons there are in most cities, but it doesn’t matter. The attitude is already in place.”
She waved a hand at the city before them. “Habinal City looks good on the surface, but it is equally rotten within. The government wastes a great deal of money making it look good.”
Piper pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. “So what is the Gaians’ long-term plan? If they got rid of the Consulates and chased out the daemons, what would they do next?”
Mona tucked a lock of auburn hair behind her ear. “I don’t know anymore. Walter spoke of all kinds of plans to rebuild, but I’ve recently begun to doubt his competence.”
“Do you think he’s in Samael’s pocket?”
“I doubt it ... but who knows.”
Piper sighed, staring out the window. She could feel her mother’s eyes on her.
“Piper ... about what happened in the meeting room ...”
She grimaced and looked at Mona. “My magic was killing me. I had to take some drastic steps to survive, and part of that was ... waking up my daemon blood.” She shrugged uncomfortably, not sure how else to explain it. “I have a daemon glamour now, same as daemons have a human glamour. But it comes with strings attached ...”
“Like shading?”
Piper nodded gloomily.
“You snapped out of it faster than many daemons do,” Mona said, her tone comforting.
She didn’t answer, not wanting to admit how severe her bloodlust issues were becoming. Mona would probably be less understanding if she knew Piper hadn’t even recognized her at first. She sighed and glanced away from the window to watch Ash and Seiya for a moment. They were sitting on the bed beside the pile of sleeping dragonets, talking quietly while Seiya stroked Teva’s mane soothingly. Turning back, she caught her mother also watching them.
“Do you really think they’re all evil?” she asked Mona. “Do you think their lives are worth less than ours?”
“I don’t think they’re evil. But this is our world. We belong here. They do not.” She looked at Piper with solemn hazel eyes. “Ethics and morals, cultural rules, and a higher conscience of right and wrong are what separate us from animals. But daemons, while able to recognize and rationalize those ideas, are not bound by them. Their natures are inherently predatory, and to them, humans are prey. That predatory drive trumps all else, including kindness, compassion, and mercy. For that reason, they will always perceive humans—who, as a society, value all three—as lesser, as weaker, and as their prey. We cannot allow them to dominate us from the top of the food chain
in our own world. That is why they must be barred from Earth.”
Nausea rose in Piper’s throat. She wanted to deny it, to challenge Mona’s perception that daemons were incapable of holding to a moral compass, but she couldn’t. She had felt it herself—that driving desire to kill her prey. Her mother was right. Mona just didn’t realize that her conclusion applied equally to her daughter.
She stood.
“Piper—” Mona began, regret instantly written on her face.
“I just—I need some air,” she said hoarsely. “I’ll be back.”
Unable to look at her mother, she walked swiftly toward the door, catching a glimpse of Ash’s sharp attention on her as she passed. She slipped out and closed the door gently—then broke into a sprint down the hall. She ran for the stairs at the end and slammed through the door. She looked down for a moment, then dashed up the steps. Bursting out the door at the top, she ran out onto a decorated rooftop plaza, complete with potted plants, tables with umbrellas, and cushioned lounge chairs. Old-fashioned streetlamps lined the plaza, casting a soft yellow glow over the abandoned space.
She sped past all that and stopped when she reached the railing at the edge. She gripped the metal rail with both hands and stared down at the glimmering river with blurry eyes as the wind whipped her bangs across her face. Tears trickled down her cheeks. She slowly dropped into a crouch, hands still on the rail, and leaned her forehead against the bars.
When Natania had first told her how to survive her magic, she’d told Piper to yield her humanity to the daemon within. Piper hadn’t realized at the time how literal those words had been. She hadn’t realized how much of herself she would be sacrificing to her daemon blood. How much that daemon blood would come to rule her.
Mona was right. When it came down to it, Piper had become just as much of a predator as any other daemon. She was just as capable of killing, regardless of any morals or conscience. She disgusted herself. She’d dedicated her future to becoming a keeper of the peace, but how could she be that now? A peacekeeper who might turn on her wards at any moment if her predatory instincts were triggered? It would be hypocrisy.
She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the sobs rising in her chest. Who was she? What was she? She didn’t know, but she hated it. She hated who she had become since stepping out of the Void. She hated the monster inside her that she couldn’t control. At least with the Sahar, she’d been able to control it—mostly—and detach herself from its madness. That madness hadn’t been inside her, part of her.
Still clutching the railing, she sucked in deep breaths as she pulled herself together again. After a few minutes, she stiffly rose to her feet. If she stayed away too long, the others would come looking for her and she didn’t want to explain what was wrong.
As she turned around, a glimpse of another person out of the corner of her eye made her jump half a foot before she realized it was just her reflection. Several wide panels of glass lined one side of the sitting area, breaking the wind without obstructing the view. In the darkness, the glass had become a perfect mirror, reflecting her pale face back at her.
She hesitantly approached the glass. She hadn’t spent much time lately looking in mirrors and it felt strange to look at her reflection for no other purpose than to study herself. She touched her hair, smoothing her ponytail and thinking of the bold red and black streaks she’d once preferred. It had been months since Ash had burned the dye away to make her less recognizable.
With one finger, she touched the skin just beneath her eye, recently healed by Seiya. She also thought about the heavy eyeliner she used to wear religiously. She didn’t even own eyeliner anymore. All her makeup had been destroyed along with the Consulate.
Her dragon scale halter top and armguards shone faintly, silvery blue even in the orange light of the lamps. They were distinctly exotic, unlike anything she’d ever seen. Did her daemon form look that exotic, or just freakish? Her lips trembled a little with emotion and she closed her eyes, turning her focus inward. So far, she’d only learned how to consciously shift from daemon to human, but figuring out the reverse only took a minute’s worth of internal prodding before shivering tingles washed over her in a wave of warmth. She opened her eyes to see, for the first time, what she really looked like as a half-daemon.
The three iridescent teardrop scales that formed an elegant little triangle in the center of her forehead were the first thing to catch her eye. Then the short dairokkan drifting down from behind her ears, just long enough to brush her shoulders. She lightly touched one and shuddered as she felt the rubbing sensation inside her head. It felt like warm silk and soft scale combined, smooth and flexible.
Her gaze moved down her reflection, over the hard, mother-of-pearl scales that protected the tops of her shoulders to the line of scales that ran over her elbows and disappeared beneath her armguards. In the gap between the hem of her top and the waist of her jeans, large scales plated the curves of her hips. She turned around and craned her neck to look over her shoulder. A line of scales ran down her spine to a spot just above the low-cut waist of her jeans where the four long dairokkan originated. They swayed out around her legs, the longer pair almost reaching her calves.
Turning back to face the glass, she clenched her jaw as she studied the strange creature looking back at her. No wonder she kept freaking out daemons who saw her in this form. She didn’t look all that much like a ryujin and the daemons she’d encountered so far seemed to have assumed that she was some kind of full-blooded daemon they weren’t familiar with—not a haemon with a diluted daemon form.
She stared at her reflection and wished she could hate it. She wished she thought it was ugly but she couldn’t convince herself it was. Her scales were lovely, shimmering in a thousand shades of blue and green under the lights. Her dairokkan, now that she knew they weren’t tentacles, had an undeniable elegance and grace to them.
No, she couldn’t hate this form for its appearance. But she could hate what was beneath the surface—the bloodthirsty daemon blood flowing through her veins.
CHAPTER 21
AS SHE stared at her reflection, the door to the plaza clanked as someone started to open it.
Panic shot through her and she leaped frantically for one of the tables. Ducking behind the chairs, she imagined some hapless hotel guest spotting her. The door swung open and Ash stepped out onto the plaza. His gaze snapped straight to her hiding spot. She poked her head above the chairs.
“Oh,” she said with a rough exhale. “It’s just you.”
His eyebrows rose. She stood as he walked over to join her. His eyes flicked over her, his expression questioning. Her cheeks heated with a blush and she waved a hand at the reflective glass.
“I hadn’t actually seen what I looked like yet ...” she mumbled. She closed her eyes, scrambling to cut the magic line that held her form in place. Another rush of tingles swept over her as she returned to her human form.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Ash murmured.
Her eyes popped open again. “Do you like me better when I look like a daemon?”
His eyebrows shot up again at her tone. She hadn’t meant to sound so aggressive. His head tilted to one side. He reached out and, before she could stop him, slid the hair ring out of her hair. Her ponytail collapsed, hair falling over her shoulders.
“I like your hair up or down,” he said. “Doesn’t mean one is better than the other.”
She huffed and half-heartedly combed her fingers through her hair to straighten it out; it probably had a big hair ring dent. “Point taken. Can I have my hair ring back?”
He stuck it in his pocket. She glared, then sighed. His gaze wandered over the plaza, taking in the posh decorations. She watched him, her heart squeezing painfully. The light cast dark shadows across his face, accentuating his features: the angle of his cheekbones, the sharp line of his jaw. He’d left his weapons and armored vest in the hotel room, so there was nothing obstructing her view of the hard muscles of his arms and t
he way his dark, sleeveless shirt clung to his toned chest.
She gave her head a little shake and focused as his eyes returned to her.
“You left in a hurry,” he said, then paused. “I heard what your mother said.”
She dropped her eyes to the patio tiles between her feet. “Do you think she’s wrong?”
“Her assessment of us is fairly accurate, but just because our morality works differently than a human’s doesn’t make our way wrong. It’s just different.”
Her gaze snapped back up to him, hatred rising in her—hatred for herself. “I wanted to attack Lyre while I was shaded. I almost killed the Gaian Council. I didn’t even recognize my mother. How can you say that’s not wrong?”
“You can’t control your instincts yet—”
“I can’t control them at all.” Her voice started to shake. “I can’t even think straight. I’m so horrified that this—this monster is inside me just waiting for the chance to kill people.”
Shadows slid across his eyes. “I ran my sword through you. Neither of us has the control we should have right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
“How then? How do I learn to control it? It’s not like I’m struggling with it while it’s happening. I’m just all—all daemon with nothing human left.”
He let out a long breath. “If I knew, I would tell you.”
She pressed her lips together, fighting the urge to cry. Ash touched her arm. She looked at him uncertainly, aching inside. Hesitantly, she stepped closer and he closed his arms around her, pulling her close. She leaned against his chest, eyes squeezed shut as her heart rate kicked up and warmth whispered through her.
“Your mother thinks we’re immoral.” His voice was soft, humming in his chest. She shivered as the sound seeped down to her bones. “She doesn’t realize we have just as much moral integrity as any human. But in a life and death world like ours, we’ve had to evolve to choose survival first.”
Reap the Shadows (Steel & Stone Book 4) Page 23